Article Posted on : - May 19, 2011

F-15K strike fighter of South Korea. Photo: Boeing.

SEOUL (BNS): South Korea's arms procurement agency said Wednesday that it will open a bid next month to purchase radar-evading cruise missiles for its F-15K fighter aircraft, Yonhap news agency reported.

According to the Defence Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), S Korea had originally planned to buy Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) from Lockheed Martin, but the plan got delayed due technical reasons.

"Currently, a bid to buy JASSM-level missiles will be opened in June," an official at DAPA was quoted as saying by the local news media.

S Korea's Air Force is planning to upgrade its systems in order to cope with growing military threats from North Korea.

JASSM is an autonomous, long-range, conventional, air-to-ground, precision standoff missile for the US Air Force. Designed to destroy high-value, well-defended, fixed and relocatable targets, JASSM’s significant standoff range keeps aircrews well out of danger from hostile air defence systems.

A 2,000-pound class weapon with a penetrator/blast fragmentation warhead, JASSM cruises autonomously in adverse weather, day or night, using a state-of-the-art infrared seeker in addition to the anti-jam GPS to find a specific aim point on the target. Its stealthy airframe makes it extremely difficult to defeat.